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22 - Byzantium in equilibrium, 886–944

from PART III - NON-CAROLINGIAN EUROPE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Timothy Reuter
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

in the late ninth century the Byzantine emperor’s dominions were straggling and vulnerable. The survival of the state was not in question but the government of Leo VI (886–912) faced harassment and humiliating reverses on several fronts, while fears of rebellions were all too lurid for a royal family which owed everything to a bloody palace coup barely a generation earlier.

It is against this background that one should view the various manuals of governance and law-collections dating from Leo’s reign. They evince his enthusiasm for order, godliness and good learning. Besides commissioning, compiling or interpolating these works he wrote numerous sermons. He aspired to be acknowledged as the fount of wisdom and pious enlightenment, judging by the description of his bath-house near the palace complex. Leo’s sobriquet, ‘the Wise’, implied in the bath-house imagery, acclaimed by contemporary courtiers and derided by Symeon of Bulgaria, was not wholly undeserved. Like his father Basil I, he wished his rule to be associated with illustrious figures of the Christian empire’s acknowledged heyday, notably Constantine and Justinian. At the same time he propagated the idea of renewal in, for example, his highly euphemistic version of Basil’s accession: the former state of affairs had been removed together with Basil’s senior co-emperor, Michael III, ‘for the purpose of fresh and well-ordered change’.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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References

Canard, M. (1953), Histoire de la dynastie des H’amdanides de Jazīra et de Syrie, Paris
Dagron, G. (1983), ‘Byzance et le modèle islamique au x siècle. A propos des Constitutions tactiques de l’empereur Léon VI’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris Google Scholar
Dobschütz, E. (1899), Christusbilder, Leipzig
Grierson, P. (1973a, 1973b), Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection: Leo III to Nicephorus III, 717–1081, 2 vols., Washington, DC
Howard-Johnston, J. D. (1983), ‘Byzantine Anzitene’, in Mitchell, S. (ed.), Armies and Frontiers in Roman and Byzantine Anatolia (BAR, International Series 156), Oxford Google Scholar
Lemerle, P. (1967), ‘“Roga” et rente d’état aux X–XI siècles’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 25 Google Scholar
Magdalino, P. (1988), ‘The bath of Leo the Wise and the “Macedonian Renaissance” revisited: topography, ceremonial, ideology’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 Google Scholar
Morris, R. (1995), Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843–1118, Cambridge
Segal, J. B. (1970), Edessa, ‘The Blessed City’, Oxford
Sternbach, L. (1899), ‘Christophorea’, Eos 5 Google Scholar

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